Title

Author

Defense Date

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

Department

Painting and Printmaking

First Advisor

Gregory Volk

Second Advisor

Holly Morrison

Third Advisor

Cara Benedetto

Abstract

My work focuses on the construction and validation of images assembled from fragments of found photographs, generating new narratives that hover between “reality” and fiction. Archive and Fiction: Construction of the past and the self is the result of two years of artwork exploring my family archives and my relationship to my family through them. I understand the family as a place of identity in continuous change, serving as a container of history and memory. Conceiving of my family albums as material allows me to approach my family history as a visitor. Mediated memory and constructed memory intertwine in the family album, a linear format that also inadvertently reveals gaps, both temporal and contextual. By understanding how photography’s authority constructs personal and family identity, I seek to undermine this authority, using photography’s “realness” against itself to create alternative narratives of within which I can belong.